Log management is the process of collecting, aggregating, analyzing, alerting on and archiving data from various computer network devices, such as servers, routers, switches, firewalls, etc. Log management can assist in achieving corporate compliance goals and reduces the risk of legal exposure from security breaches. Log management can significantly reduce network downtime by helping information technology (IT) departments identify and fix network issues resulting from misuse, malicious attacks and failed systems.
One of the most important aspects of log management is the ability to generate new and customized reports. Conventional approaches use predefined data structures (e.g., database schema, tables, attributes) to generate customized reports. Such conventional approaches, however, are inflexible in that users can neither define custom attributes nor custom annotate logs.